– By James Powers – Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House really illustrates the truth of that cliche motivational aphorism: “shoot for the moon – even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Creator Mike Flanagan has indeed shot for the moon with this show, attempting a low-key insane balancing act between horror and drama. It’s something like a …

–By Sam Hendrian– Officially instituted by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, Thanksgiving is a beloved American holiday with a universal appeal. Gratitude is a virtue that no good-hearted person wants to suppress, and Thanksgiving is a perfect opportunity to let it flow freely. Cinematic history is filled with movies that extol this great virtue, sometimes in haunting and unexpected ways. …

– By James Powers – Hollywood producing giant Jeffrey Katzenberg has some big plans afoot, although you may not have heard about them quite yet. Katzenberg, the former Disney chairman who went on to co-found Dreamworks (thus giving us, among other things, the animation Burger King to Disney’s animation McDonald’s, but that’s a different story), is now looking to revolutionize …

– By James Powers – My dad is a voracious reader, and as a result one fixture of my upbringing was the shelves and shelves of books lining the living room wall – sci-fi anthologies, historical volumes (he’s obsessed with the Civil War), political commentaries, paperback fantasy. We had moved maybe a half-dozen times by the time I turned eighteen, …

–By Sam Hendrian– It’s you I like/It’s not the things you wear/It’s not the way you do your hair/But it’s you I like. These simple yet profound song lyrics help summarize the heroic mission of Fred Rogers, the legendary children’s television host who is profiled in the acclaimed 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? A quiet man with a …

– By Tyler Carlos – Spoilers Below With superhero mania still in full swing in Hollywood, it was only a matter of time until the world was reintroduced to one of the most iconic comic book characters – the parasitic symbiote Venom. After the trainwreck that was 2008’s Spider-Man 3, Sony announced in 2016 that a new Venom film was in the works …

– By Sam Hendrian – With Halloween just around the corner, many folks like to pop-in some scary movies and have a thrillingly good time. While this is certainly a fun tradition, there are many scary films that can turn out to be a complete waste of time or potentially scarring for life. With that being said, there are also many …

– By Tyler Carlos – Spoilers Below Traditionally, there has always been a hard line between television shows that are for adults and what television shows are for children, and we still see it everywhere in media today. Most television series aimed at grown-up audiences appear on the traditional networks, like ABC and NBC, or else subscription based television, such …

–By Sam Hendrian– Reading the news is rarely an uplifting act, especially when it is saturated with stories of seemingly good people falling from grace. The Joker’s haunting words in The Dark Knight are proven time and time again to be true: “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” From Bill …

– By Amanda Valdovinos – Spoilers below. Amid the current saturation of dystopian and sci-fi content in the media industry, the vast majority of Netflix viewers may have missed last week’s release of the Netflix original animated film Next Gen. At first glance, Next Gen camouflages as “another cute robot film” in the same vein as Disney/Marvel’s Big Hero 6 …